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Saturday, August 6, 2016

Saturday Morning Trip to the Vet

When I went to bed last night, sometime around midnight, I was exhausted.

I spent last weekend in Austin—ending my trip with a 15-hour travel day on Monday (no fault of Delta's, all fault of my poor and inefficient flight planning)—and I returned to work bright and early that next Tuesday morning.

By the time Friday rolled around, I was feeling pretty les miserables.

So this morning, when I rolled out of bed around 11, I was all happy and refreshed. Adam had the coffeemaker brewing a fresh pot of hazelnut coffee, and it was a sunny Saturday.

I planned on hunkering down at the dining room table for a day of query letters and editing work. Maybe I would even artfully arrange my new Kate Spade tumbler (Thanks, Lib!) beside the vase of fresh flowers for a lovely Instagram picture.

The options were endless.

But when I went to army crawl beneath the bed to wake Clementine (who is deaf, and must be physically awakened), I was alarmed to see a pink discharge leaking from her "problem" eye.

When I adopted Clementine a little over a year ago, she came with two bum eyes. She has cataracts, and one of her eyes (the "problem" eye) leaks a clear discharge more often than not. She's been to the very expensive animal ophthalmologist to be checked out and cleared of any serious ailments, so it's just a Clementine quirk we deal with.

You can see her "problem" eye pretty well here!

This morning though...eeeeeek!

Even though Clementine was acting completely normal (and even let me wipe the pink discharge away from her eye with no flinching or agitation), I immediately called the vet who was able to get us in straightaway.

So off Clem and I went, zipping down the road to make it to the office as soon as we could.

Clementine's vet is wonderful. They took her back the moment we walked in the door. After some pretty uncomfortable eye tests (including the one where they stain the dog's eyes yellow), the vet determined Clementine had a pretty awful abrasion across her already cloudy eyeball.

Poor Clem!

We were sent home with antibiotics (with steroids...intense!) that Clem will have to take three times a day for ten days.

So while Adam and I will need to keep a close eye (ha ha) on her, I am just so relieved it wasn't something more serious.

Our little patient resting comfortably.

I swear, each time Clementine has a medical scare, it reminds me that I'm nowhere close to being ready for children.

If I get this worked up and emotional with my geriatric dog, how would I behave with a sick child? I was on the verge of sobbing in the examination room during Clementine's tests!

Now as I sit down with my mug of hazelnut coffee and search for literary agents, I'm feeling quite thankful for my little Corgi-Beagle mix and am so glad she's going to be okay.